Times Square smelled like hot pretzels, exhaust, and the kind of money that never touched the people walking under it.
Hanson Lee had been thinking about his rent.
Somewhere in the crowd, a guy with a selfie stick kept yelling, "Bro—bro—this has to be an AR stunt," like saying it louder would make it true.
That was it. That was the grand scope of his day—rent, deadlines, and whether the bodega guy would judge him for buying the cheap coffee again.
Then the sky cleared its throat.
It wasn't thunder. It wasn't a plane. It was a sound like a zipper being pulled open through the fabric of noon.
Heads tilted up in unison. A hundred phones rose like worship.
Above the canyon of screens and steel, a seam appeared—dark, thin, impossibly straight—running from one side of the blue to the other. It flexed, as if something behind it was testing the strength of the world.
Someone laughed too loudly. "Okay. That's insane. Who's doing this? Netflix?"
A second later every billboard in Times Square—every LED wall that had been selling sneakers, soda, movie trailers—stuttered and went blank.
White.
Then text, clean and centered, appeared on all of them at once:
WELCOME TO EARTH ONLINE.
The crowd held its breath like an audience that didn't remember buying a ticket.
Hanson's phone vibrated in his pocket. He pulled it out on reflex, but the screen was dead. No signal. No service. A black mirror reflecting his own face.
His world brightened.
Not around him. In him.
A red badge snapped into the top-left corner of his vision, crisp as if it had always belonged there:
● LIVE
Hanson blinked. He blinked harder. The badge stayed.
A black bar unfolded across the top of reality—exactly the wrong shade of familiar—like a streaming interface skinned over the city. A title appeared with the casual confidence of someone naming an episode:
EARTH ONLINE — Pilot Episode: NEW YORK
Category: Survival / Reality
Under it, a view count surged so fast the digits blurred.
On the right, a vertical column appeared, scrolling at warp speed: chat messages stacked over one another, too many to read, too fast to deny.
"Is everyone seeing—" Hanson started.
A new line pinned itself beneath the title in a smaller, colder font:
SYSTEM NOTE: SUBJECT CONFIRMED.
SUBJECT: HANSON LEE
LOCATION: NEW YORK CITY
STATUS: UNVERIFIED CONTESTANT
Contestant.
The word landed like a hand closing around his throat.
A woman in a suit beside him whispered, "It's… it's on the screens." Her finger trembled as she pointed.
Hanson turned.
His own face stared back at him from a billboard the size of a building. He was framed dead-center, the red ● LIVE badge in the corner, a name tag under his chin as if the world had decided he needed branding:
CONTESTANT: HANSON LEE (NYC)
The seam in the sky widened.
Something pressed against it—dark, shifting—and for a fraction of a second Hanson saw an eye the size of a stadium, lidless and curious.
Then the seam tore open like fabric.
A pressure wave rolled through Times Square. People staggered. A tourist dropped a phone. Somewhere a child screamed and didn't stop.
The voice came next.
It didn't come from speakers. It didn't come from the air. It came from the inside of everything, perfectly translated, perfectly cheerful.
"Citizens of Earth," it said, warm as a customer service line. "Congratulations."
Silence followed, the city stunned into listening.
"You have been selected as the stage for our most beloved live program: Earth Online."
Someone shouted, "Who are you?!" Another voice: "This is terrorism!"
The voice ignored them. "Your planet is scheduled for termination due to resource reclamation and hazard containment. However, by popular demand, we have authorized one final season."
Termination.
Hanson's knees threatened to fold. He pressed his palm to the side of a metal pole to steady himself.
A translucent tooltip appeared, hovering at the bottom-left of his vision like a pop-up for first-time users:
♥ LIKES (EARTH SOURCE): provides Base Attributes to local contestants.
♦ DONATIONS (OFFWORLD SOURCE): provides External Items / Modifiers.
Under that, a heart icon pulsed.
It started at 0.
Then it jumped.
♥ 0 → 1,432 → 9,004 → 21,118
Hanson felt it like a warm hand on his spine. The nausea of panic eased. The tremor in his fingers softened.
Not gone.
Managed.
The chat to his right exploded into legible bursts as his brain latched onto single lines, desperate for any anchor.
RUN
IS THIS REAL
NYC WHERE U AT
LIKE HIM LIKE HIM
DON'T DIE BRO
When the pressure wave hit, Hanson caught an older woman by the elbow before she went down. She didn't thank him—she just stared up, lips moving without sound.
He looked at the heart count again—it was easier than looking at the sky.
It climbed whenever his face filled the screens.
Whenever the crowd screamed.
Whenever the monster-eye blinked.
The seam above Times Square rippled, and something fell through.
It hit a yellow cab with enough force to crush the hood flat. Metal screamed. Glass sprayed. The cab's horn blared once, then died.
The thing unfolded itself from the wreckage.
It was not a ship.
It was not a man in a suit.
It was too many joints wearing armor that looked like smoked glass. Its head was a smooth plate split by a single seam where a mouth should have been.
The seam opened.
The sound wasn't a roar. It was a signal—pressure, static, nausea—like the creature was broadcasting in a frequency meant to break bone.
People ran. The crowd became a tide.
Hanson backed away, trapped between bodies and barricades. The creature turned its head slowly, as if selecting a point of interest.
Its seam-mouth angled toward him.
A notification chirped—bright, cheerful, obscene.
NEW OBJECTIVE (AUTO):
SURVIVE — 00:10:00
A countdown snapped into place above his vision.
09:59… 09:58…
The chat column became a waterfall of one word.
RUNRUNRUNRUNRUN
The heart count surged.
♥ 21,118 → 38,409
Heat flooded Hanson's limbs. His legs unlocked. His lungs pulled air deeper.
He ran.
Not toward safety—there wasn't any.
Toward the first split in the street that might become a choice.
A subway entrance yawned to his left. A narrow service alley cut between buildings to his right.
His interface chimed again.
POLL (EARTH) — 00:09
WHERE SHOULD HE GO?
A) SUBWAY ENTRANCE
B) SERVICE ALLEY
Hanson skidded, breath tearing at his throat. "I'm not— I'm not doing this," he said, but his voice was swallowed by the crowd and the countdown and the monster behind him.
The poll timer ticked down like a bomb.
00:05… 00:04…
Percentages bloomed over the options.
A) 63%
B) 37%
Hanson lunged toward the alley anyway—it felt less like a trap.
The timer hit zero.
RESULTS FINAL.
A) SUBWAY ENTRANCE — 78%
B) SERVICE ALLEY — 22%
The world obeyed the poll.
The alley didn't collapse.
It didn't fill with debris.
It simply stopped existing.
A sheet of smooth blackness unzipped from thin air and slammed into place, erasing the alley's opening flush against the brick like someone had edited the footage and didn't bother hiding the cut.
Hanson slammed a hand into the black wall. It was solid. Cold. Unforgiving.
Behind him, the creature stepped closer. The pressure in the air thickened. The crowd's screams became distant, muffled by the subway's mouth like a throat swallowing the city.
Hanson turned.
The subway entrance was the only open path.
Chosen by millions of unseen thumbs.
He dove down the steps.
The moment he crossed the threshold, the sound of Times Square dimmed, as if someone had lowered the volume slider on reality.
The countdown kept ticking.
09:21… 09:20…
Above it, the red ● LIVE badge pulsed like an eye that wouldn't blink.
He didn't know who was watching.
He only knew the likes moved like weather—warm when he was in frame, cold when he wasn't.